AH, COUNTY Mayo! Ireland鈥檚 greenest shore, washed by the tropical waters of the Gulf Stream, as the tourist brochures have it. A funny place to pitch for the Winter Olympics in 2026, you may think. The Irish Met Service rather agrees, pointing out that Mayo has just six days of snow a year, barely enough for a snowball fight, let alone a global snow-fest.
But has other ideas. Mayo Ireland, the local internet service provider behind the Olympic bid, has been doing some reading. It has discovered that global warming may one day switch off the Gulf Stream, plunging County Mayo and the rest of western Europe into a winter wonderland more befitting their latitude 鈥� roughly the same as Siberia鈥檚 Novosibirsk and Canada鈥檚 Hudson Bay.
Mayo鈥檚 county town, Claremorris, is in fact further north than either of the last two Winter Olympics venues, Salt Lake City and Nagano, Japan, or the next two, Turin in Italy and Vancouver, Canada. So it has every right to be ordering the ski lifts, measuring the bobsleigh runs, stocking the bars and generally planning ahead for the unveiling of Les Alpes de Mayo in anticipation of the big climate switch-off on its way.
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The site is even sponsored by Ski Lebanon. Now that really is silly, surely. Except it turns out that Beirut鈥檚 beautiful people do indeed take to the snowy mountains overlooking the Beqaa valley each winter. Perhaps this will turn into a serious bid yet.
FROM the BBC News Science/Nature 鈥� 鈥淎ntarctic Scott鈥檚 lasting legacy鈥� (, an article about Scott鈥檚 1912 Antarctic expedition and the deciduous tree fossils recovered by the party.
鈥淭he accepted wisdom is that trees dropped their leaves because they were unable to photosynthesise during the dark winters. (Photosynthesis is the light-dependent process used by plants to make carbon, the stuff of life.)鈥�
Reader Barry Wilbourn, who spotted this, asks: Why aren鈥檛 plant leaves black, then?
MIRACULOUS reports of a man who can survive on only water and sunlight have festooned international newspapers and the web this summer, including reports in SpaceDaily, the Hindustan Times, The Weekend Australian, and even one (slightly sarcastic) in the Boston Herald. Hira Ratan Manek says that he abandoned all solid food in 1995 and claims that if you stare at the sun for a few seconds each morning, after 9 months your hunger will completely disappear.
Thinking that this might be a slightly exaggerated version of reality, we set out to get the truth straight from Manek鈥檚 starved mouth. Apparently Manek works out of the Cosmic Energy Center of Longwood, Florida 鈥� but sadly this is not listed in the phone directory and nor does it have a functional phone number listed on the web.
Widening the search, we followed up claims in the reports that NASA was interested in Manek鈥檚 abilities, had already tested his skills last year, and was now inviting him back to figure out just how he does it. Again, sadly, NASA鈥檚 press officer Dolores Beasley says she has had heaps of phone calls from the press about this one but can only say: 鈥淲e haven鈥檛 found anyone at NASA who has met this man.鈥�
SpaceDaily鈥檚 publisher merely said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 a hoax, most likely.鈥� Not that he actually knew if it is or isn鈥檛.
So, Manek, if you鈥檙e out there, give us a call. We鈥檇 love to have you round for tea and biscuits and ask you all about it. Or just tea, of course.
SOFTWARE for working out the quickest or shortest route from A to B is getting better all the time. The route planner linked from BT鈥檚 Openworld home page seems to think it鈥檚 astoundingly good. It informs reader Chris Bradfield that the distance from his home to his place of work is 8.827499 miles. It asks the time of day of your journey, too, presumably so that a future upgrade can make that nearest-millimetre precision even better by allowing for tidal effects.
IN this uncertain world, it鈥檚 not surprising that Swiss spectacles retailer Fielmann includes this disclaimer in its insurance coverage: 鈥淭he following are not insured: damages due to war, the upholding of the law of neutrality, revolutions, rebellions, uprisings, personal misbehaviour (violence against others or things during fights, brawls or tumult), earthquakes, volcano eruptions or changes in the atom structure.鈥�
FINALLY, if its spam is to be believed, Iron Man 鈥渉erbal Viagra鈥� has been featured on over 100 TV news and top radio stations across America. Which is hardly surprising if the claims it makes for itself are true, for not only does it lower cholesterol, but it 鈥渄ramatically enhances organism鈥�.
Checking the Sky TV guide, reader Derek Rowe was surprised to come across a programme entitled The Joy of Pain. How very daring and modern, he thought, until he discovered it was an abbreviated version of The Joy of Painting